do explosions travel thorugh walls

[Flying Steel]

Even if you could shoot a coilgun through a wall, how would you aim it?

There are many situations where someone on your team has line of sight on a camping alien, but can't do anything or enough about it directly. So this "spotter" is how you know where to land the heavy artillery.

Other times just seeing where the alien ran in and guessing where he is in there by how far he has already moved (and thus how many time units he had left) can be enough for landing a damaging shot on him.

I disagree that the lack of damage through walls or destructable terrain is a hole in the gameplay. Being able to blow through every wall actually reduces the tactical complexity of the built environment to a very one-strategy game. This may change somewhat, however, when a visibility system is introduced to the game.

You might be overlooking some key limitations of damage through walls though if you think it would make for a one strategy game:

1) It doesn't demolish anything.
2) It doesn't defeat the stealth advantages of cover.
3) It has very limited penetration and/or area effect inside; it can't really hurt more than a couple targets behind more than a single thin wall.
4) The few weapons that can actually do this are specialized, unwieldy, expensive, advanced and/or ammo limited.
5) The battlescape conflicts are brief and fierce, with no reinforcements, so you don't have time to bazooka everyplace someone might be hiding, again and again.
6) It's a major factor in real life warfare, which uses numerous strategies.

As far as it being a hole in the gameplay or not, how else do you take out one or two aliens, held up in some small building, with very limited to no cover around it to approach with? Your only options are to use grenades or to storm it, but both of those require getting extremely close, which means losing (perhaps a lot of) soldiers almost certainly.

This is where some kind of artillery is supposed to come in, both in real life warfare and a well balanced strategy game. You have to have something to use against an enemy that is sticking to a very defensive position indefinitely. If they are consistently not doing anything particularly intelligent or active, just camping there, they need to be punished for it on the battlefield, not rewarded.

[Hertzila]

I think it should depend much more on the type of material the wall is made of. And if you do shoot trough it, your damage should be lower than normal (completely penetrating particle beams, every players worst nightmare). Also regarding rocket launcher, at least real life AP-rockets work basically by punching a small hole into the armor and spraying molten metal all over the other side (IIRC, temp. inside a tank could raise well over 1000 Celcius). Such rockets could work as bunker-busters through cover.

Tactically, this would be interesting however. Kinda like in BF: BC2.

[homunculus]

as far as i have seen, in every map there is always enough cover to get close safely.
however, it may be difficult to identify what is cover and what is not, from what things look like in the tactical screen.
for example, in the 'rome' map there is lots of cover right in the middle of one of the bridges, but it might not look like a good cover.

and, i am bit confused about the topic of the thread.
the original post involved a door, to me it seemed like the original post was about 'do explosions travel around the wall through a doorway?' which would be similar to 'does an explosion in a small room do more damage than in the open?'
maybe i misunderstood, and it was indeed meant as 'through walls', but why the doorway then?
it is not only about explosion damage traveling this way and that, but also about smoke and gas grenades, and flamethrowers.

we would need not only destructible walls, but also an aerodynamic model.

: ))))))) !!!!

lol.
and, if we did have destructible walls, how would a building really collapse?
what about thermobaric bombs?

[keybounce]

I disagree that the lack of damage through walls or destructable terrain is a hole in the gameplay. Being able to blow through every wall actually reduces the tactical complexity of the built environment to a very one-strategy game. This may change somewhat, however, when a visibility system is introduced to the game.

I can assure you that in the original XCom, destroying walls to gain access to enemies was both needed, useful, and risky (you gave them access to you as well).

as far as i have seen, in every map there is always enough cover to get close safely.

Try playing Wilderness as a skirmish. Wide open, shooting each other the first turn.

[dfscott]

Maybe it was a bug, but I had a situation last night on the bridge map where it appeared that a sniper shot when through a wall (a fence, rather).  I was hitting the space bar to step through the alien targets when I saw one that I thought my sniper has LOS on.

As I clicked to hit, I noticed too late that the green line went through a fence about 2 squares in front of him and then turned red the rest of the way to the alien (although I did have a cross hair).  However, I had already clicked, and the shot went off, killing the alien.

So either, a) it went through the fence, b) my shot was a little off line, far enough to miss the fence but not far enough to miss the alien, or c) the "blocked" red line wasn't accurate.

[Sarin]

B is right.  The line is from center of your soldier to center of alien. I had a few similar hits too.

[TDarklighter]

Explosions do not travel through walls, though I would like to tweak the range on mine so they damage a bit further out than they do (like one or two more squares tops).  My people can't seem to throw hand grenades to save their lives.

Speaking of which. The game needs more half sized civilians that run a lot, are a harder-to-hit-target, and will run into your soldier's LOS at every given chance. I mean those little human vermin known as Kids.

Great, something else for an alien to try to hide behind when I'm using my flamethrower!

Funny story - I was at a farm earlier today with one of my flamers searching through a house.  Alien ran by her and ducked into a bedroom.  My turn came up and my flamegirl walks around the corner - there's the alien, standing in front of a civilian in the corner of the room, apparently thinking that I wouldn't risk hitting her.

Russia paid well for that harvester a few minutes later and we kept the story of the flame-broiled civilian between us. 

[Siim]

Maybe it was a bug, but I had a situation last night on the bridge map where it appeared that a sniper shot when through a wall (a fence, rather).  I was hitting the space bar to step through the alien targets when I saw one that I thought my sniper has LOS on.

As I clicked to hit, I noticed too late that the green line went through a fence about 2 squares in front of him and then turned red the rest of the way to the alien (although I did have a cross hair).  However, I had already clicked, and the shot went off, killing the alien.

So either, a) it went through the fence, b) my shot was a little off line, far enough to miss the fence but not far enough to miss the alien, or c) the "blocked" red line wasn't accurate.

The sniper rifle shots DO go through walls. I have used it multiple times to kill a camping alien and my soldier wasn't even close to seeing the bastard. Use IR goggles to spot aliens behind walls and sniper rifle to eliminate them safely. I am not yet sure if the shots also travel through the walls of a UFO or only human-made structures.

Game version is 2.3

[dough]

The sniper rifle shots DO go through walls. I have used it multiple times to kill a camping alien and my soldier wasn't even close to seeing the bastard. Use IR goggles to spot aliens behind walls and sniper rifle to eliminate them safely. I am not yet sure if the shots also travel through the walls of a UFO or only human-made structures.

Game version is 2.3

Yes, I've seen the same thing.  I was quite surprised the first time I saw the bullet trail coming through the wall, and just today I got the opportunity to target and successfully take down an alien hiding in a building.  I am now looking forward to testing out my other weapons to see what else can fire through walls.  I enjoy using heavy lasers, but unfortunately they don't pass through

[Duke]

@Slim & dough:
We should be able to shoot through japanese paper walls and some other things in the future, but right now, shooting through walls is a bug.

If you find such a situation again, please report it with mapname, weapon, position/screenshot (of the place and the targeting, not the bullet).

It shouldn't depend on the weapon afaik.

[Lew Yard]

If it shouldn't be happening and not on a per-weapon-specific basis, then why is there a 'throughWall' parameter in the weapon UFO data and why did the 'resolve single shot' code check it and make provisions for reduced-damage wall-penetrating shots?  (Or at least there was, the last time I looked -- which was a while ago).

IIRC, only the sniper rifle, bolter rifle, coil gun, and minigun have it.

[richcop]

Hello I am new to the website but I have played X-Com for several years and have been playing UFO:AI for about 1 year. I just want to let everyone know in regards to explosions through walls. Today I was playing and (mis)threw a plasma grenade. It went up against the window and detonated, killing two aliens inside. The next map I intentionally did it a second time, but with a gas grenade. It was effective in stunning the alien. So in effect as long as the alien is next to a window and the grendade is against the wall, (or at least in the area of effect).